Following Public Finances: The Mirage of MDBs Countercyclicality

This paper investigates the co-movement of sovereign lending from multilateral development banks (MDBs) and private creditors with government expenditure. The paper finds that multilateral sovereign lending follows government expenditure and that this correlation does not change if governments are running a surplus or a deficit. This finding raises doubts on the feasibility of MDBs to be counter-cyclical, unless the governments themselves implement counter-cyclical fiscal policies.